_Vailima_, _July_ 7_th_, 1894.
DEAR HENRY JAMES,—I am going to try and dictate to you a letter or a
note, and begin the same without any spark of hope, my mind being
entirely in abeyance. This malady is very bitter on the literary man. I
have had it now coming on for a month, and it seems to get worse instead
of better. If it should prove to be softening of the brain, a melancholy
interest will attach to the present document. I heard a great deal about
you from my mother and Graham Balfour; the latter declares that you could
take a First in any Samoan subject. If that be so, I should like to hear
you on the theory of the constitution. Also to consult you on the force
of the particles _o lo ’o_ and _ua_, which are the subject of a dispute
among local pundits. You might, if you ever answer this, give me your
opinion on the origin of the Samoan race, just to complete the favour.
They both say that you are looking well, and I suppose I may conclude
from that that you are feeling passably. I wish I was. Do not suppose
from this that I am ill in body; it is the numskull that I complain of.
And when that is wrong, as you must be very keenly aware, you begin every
day with a smarting disappointment, which is not good for the temper. I
am in one of the humours when a man wonders how any one can be such an
ass as to embrace the profession of letters, and not get apprenticed to a
barber or keep a baked-potato stall. But I have no doubt in the course
of a week, or perhaps to-morrow, things will look better.
We have at present in port the model warship of Great Britain. She is
called the _Curaçoa_, and has the nicest set of officers and men
conceivable. They, the officers, are all very intimate with us, and the
front verandah is known as the Curaçoa Club, and the road up to Vailima
is known as the Curaçoa Track. It was rather a surprise to me; many
naval officers have I known, and somehow had not learned to think
entirely well of them, and perhaps sometimes ask myself a little uneasily
how that kind of men could do great actions? and behold! the answer comes
to me, and I see a ship that I would guarantee to go anywhere it was
possible for men to go, and accomplish anything it was permitted man to
attempt. I had a cruise on board of her not long ago to Manu’a, and was
delighted. The goodwill of all on board; the grim playfulness of — {337}
quarters, with the wounded falling down at the word; the ambulances
hastening up and carrying them away; the Captain suddenly crying, ‘Fire
in the ward-room!’ and the squad hastening forward with the hose; and,
last and most curious spectacle of all, all the men in their
dust-coloured fatigue clothes, at a note of the bugle, falling
simultaneously flat on deck, and the ship proceeding with its prostrate
crew—_quasi_ to ram an enemy; our dinner at night in a wild open
anchorage, the ship rolling almost to her gunwales, and showing us
alternately her bulwarks up in the sky, and then the wild broken cliffy
palm-crested shores of the island with the surf thundering and leaping
close aboard. We had the ward-room mess on deck, lit by pink wax tapers,
everybody, of course, in uniform but myself, and the first lieutenant
(who is a rheumaticky body) wrapped in a boat cloak. Gradually the
sunset faded out, the island disappeared from the eye, though it remained
menacingly present to the ear with the voice of the surf; and then the
captain turned on the searchlight and gave us the coast, the beach, the
trees, the native houses, and the cliffs by glimpses of daylight, a kind
of deliberate lightning. About which time, I suppose, we must have come
as far as the dessert, and were probably drinking our first glass of port
to Her Majesty. We stayed two days at the island, and had, in addition,
a very picturesque snapshot at the native life. The three islands of
Manu’a are independent, and are ruled over by a little slip of a
half-caste girl about twenty, who sits all day in a pink gown, in a
little white European house with about a quarter of an acre of roses in
front of it, looking at the palm-trees on the village street, and
listening to the surf. This, so far as I could discover, was all she had
to do. ‘This is a very dull place,’ she said. It appears she could go
to no other village for fear of raising the jealousy of her own people in
the capital. And as for going about ‘tafatafaoing,’ as we say here, its
cost was too enormous. A strong able-bodied native must walk in front of
her and blow the conch shell continuously from the moment she leaves one
house until the moment she enters another. Did you ever blow the conch
shell? I presume not; but the sweat literally hailed off that man, and I
expected every moment to see him burst a blood-vessel. We were
entertained to kava in the guest-house with some very original features.
The young men who run for the _kava_ have a right to misconduct
themselves _ad libitum_ on the way back; and though they were told to
restrain themselves on the occasion of our visit, there was a strange
hurly-burly at their return, when they came beating the trees and the
posts of the houses, leaping, shouting, and yelling like Bacchants.
I tasted on that occasion what it is to be great. My name was called
next after the captain’s, and several chiefs (a thing quite new to me,
and not at all Samoan practice) drank to me by name.
And now, if you are not sick of the _Curaçoa_ and Manu’a, I am, at least
on paper. And I decline any longer to give you examples of how not to
write.
By the by, you sent me long ago a work by Anatole France, which I confess
I did not _taste_. Since then I have made the acquaintance of the _Abbé
Coignard_, and have become a faithful adorer. I don’t think a better
book was ever written.
And I have no idea what I have said, and I have no idea what I ought to
have said, and I am a total ass, but my heart is in the right place, and
I am, my dear Henry James, yours,